Welcome Guest! If you are already a member of the BMW MOA, please log in to the forum in the upper right hand corner of this page. Check "Remember Me?" if you wish to stay logged in.

We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMWMOA forum provides.
Why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on
the forum, the club magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMWMOA offers?Want to read the MOA monthly magazine for free? Take a 3-month test ride of the magazine; check here for details.

If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You will need to join the MOA before you can post: click this register link to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

NOTE. Some content will be hidden from you. If you want to view all content, you must register for the forum if you are not a member, or if a member, you must be logged in.

ABS is not intended for when everything is clean and dry and everthing is normal. Car or bike.

ABS is intended to help save your bacon when something is NOT normal (wet pavement, oil, sand, ice, a left turning blue hair that makes you grab a double fist full of brake lever and squeeze so hard you think your gonna bend the lever).

If you're activating the ABS in normal riding, you need to change your riding style. Car or bike.

Living in a state that gets snow in the winter I activate the ABS in the car more than that in a week Same with the traction control.

There are WAY too many of us driving cars with ABS who are still operating on "pre- ABS" habits - pumping the brake. The answer is slam down the brake in you car when you can safely do so on a rain/snow/ice slick road then see what happens. Probably want to do this at a fairly slow speed at first. My belief is that it takes REPEATED PRACTICE to overcome past habits when the chips are down. You have to build new habits, not try to re-think old ones.

If you have ABS on your bike (which you probably don't ride in snow or ice,) find a safe place to practice with it on wet pavement. Same comment about the need for REPEATED PRACTICE to replace old habits. I suggest you do this practice with the bike vertical. Unless my info is not current, bike ABS is not very effective when you are leaned over and should NOT be trusted except when vertical to the pavement.

Do enough ABS tests with your car and bike and I expect you will find available traction HIGHLY VARIABLE though the road surface may look the same. You MAY have 70% of the traction in the wet that you do in the dry on the same road. (Commonly mentioned figure.) You may also find some places slick as snot though they didn't look any different. So, get comfortable with activating the ABS frequently, then make your own decision about speed in a variety of scenarios.

Another good test in a car is to pull the right side wheels off onto a gravel shoulder (leaving the left two on the pavement) then jump on the brakes (emergency stop).
Your wheels will not lock up. It's interesting to walk back and look at your tracks in the gravel.

I do this "gravel test" on my '95 R-RS also (from about 30 mph) to intentionally activate the ABS. It is said that it is good to activate the system periodically to flush the brake fluid from
the little cylinders inside the ABS unit, and it gives you a good reference as to what it feels like when the ABS kicks in. I Also do this purposely on snow or ice with the car.

The downside that I see to it- is that it increases your stopping distance by about 2. As the ABS pulses, you effectively have your brakes on about 50% of the time
during that stop. Being that my bike has the earlier generation ABS and I'm unable to shut mine off, I have also tried placing a marker on the gravel shoulder and doing a panic
stop with the ABS engaged, and another using just enough brake to not engage the ABS. If you can do it successfully, you can stop in a much shorter distance without it engaged
than you can with it.

However, I will also admit to being very skeptical about ABS when I bought this bike (my first with ABS) but it has saved my bacon (or buttocks) a couple of times.

Ken

IBA #44567 Pres. Springfield BMW Roadriders
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe."
-Albert Eienstein

You're right, adding some type of stability control on top of traction control really helps. Both of our cars have it and I can feel a big difference compared to the cars we had with just traction control.

Thanks to everyone for their responses and opinions. The 1995 K75S with ABS I had my eye on sold before I could get a chance. I will continue to look for a nice 1994 or 1995 K75S with ABS. I believe from the responses that the overwhelming opinion is that ABS is worth having on a K75 and just might save my butt one day.